


Earth and Water

by Havoc_frost123



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Desmond Swears A Lot, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pseudo super powers, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2019-08-05 20:23:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16374431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Havoc_frost123/pseuds/Havoc_frost123
Summary: Desmond wakes up in a stasis tank surrounded by Templars in Renaissance Italy. It doesn't go very well for them.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Area man literally too angry to die.

Death is blinding pain and light.

Death is peace.

Death is waking up suspended in a water tank with tubes running into his arms and not a fucking clue as to why.

Desmond doesn’t get to think about that last one very much when the world is so terribly bright and new and _vivid_. His eyes burn like they’ve had acid poured into them, the sensation accenting the kaleidoscope of colours pouring into his mind and he can feel the tubes spasm where they’re inserted into his skin. It's at this point that Desmond realises he _can’t breathe._ He thrashes and pulls and kicks instinctively and there’s something non metallic to his front that brushes against his knuckles as he searches for a catch or release or  _something_ that will give way. He moves on reflex and hammers it with his fists and soon the barrier gives, cracks and shatters with one final surge of effort and then, _finally,_ he can breathe.

The water drains away through the new opening in a rush and Desmond is carried with the torrent to meet the ground, his knees buckling as the liquid that had managed to slip past his lips comes back out in coughs and spurts. He gulps down the available air and shudders at how his body feels like one big bruise - tender and fragile and foreign feeling of all things.

He can hear voices - something being spoken in what sounds like Italian - muffled and slowly coming into focus as his sight does the same and the feeling of something wet and metallic registers underneath his feet and hands. What the hell happened? It's a question that grows in its demand for an answer when his eyes bring the ground into crisp colour and Desmond recognises the distinct grey and glowing blue of Isu construction.

Is he in the Temple then? 

The voices ring out again, now in perfect detail and Desmond strains his neck to look in the direction they’ve come from. The voice belongs to what he quickly realises, to his disbelief, is a Borgia guard and not just one - he’s surrounded by men draped in their colours and armour and he doesn’t know how to reconcile their presence with his memories of the Eye from the _fucking modern day_. Another Animus glitch like the one on the island ? Maybe, but the feedback from his senses seem far too vivid for it to be that.

“It looks like a man!”

“Keep your distance!”

He hears the voices - the fear that laces every word - and tries to shake his head to dispel the illusion because none of this makes any sense. The guard stubbornly remains in his sight and Desmond absentmindedly realises that he’s practically naked save for the tubes that are _still_ connected to his limbs and the opaque pseudo skin that hugs his lower half. He grits his teeth and grips the tubes on his left arm - hissing at the pain as each one fails to rebuff his strength as he pulls them out - quickly repeating the task with the ones on his right arm.

The action seems to make the guards nervous with every _hiss_ the tubes make as they come loose and Desmond can hear the shifting of armour and the unsheathing of swords clear as day. He ignores it as he looks at the aftermath of the last tube falling to the floor. The skin around the entry points doesn’t gush blood - it simply grows anew and seals the multitude of openings in seconds and somehow it's that detail which freaks him out enough to shakily stand and try to make sense of things.

“Stand down! Do not dare harm the creature!”

A new voice comes through, stark, familiar and dredging  up memories of sheer hate as Desmond hones in on it immediately. Rodrigo Borgia is _somehow_ standing a few feet across from him clear as day flanked by men in full battle plate. He almost staggers back to his knees because this has to be a dream or some fucked up Isu memory disc simulation. The alternative is that life after death is a serious Twilight Zone clusterfuck.

Rodrigo approaches him slowly. The sheer greed radiating from his eyes as he rakes them over Desmond’s body sends his fight or flight response into overdrive and his breath quickens with the familiar rush of adrenaline kicking in. Strange, Rodrigo isn’t dressed in Papal garb and the staff is nowhere to be seen - the coal-black robe that epitomized his tenure as Templar Grandmaster is what adorns him now and there is a lavishly designed sword hanging from a scabbard on his hip.

“Can you understand me?” The Templar asks.

“Yes.” Desmond replies automatically and feels unnerved at how alien Rodrigo Borgia looks with a smile on his face. The older man approaches him with deliberate, measured footsteps - his guards slowly moving to envelop Desmond in a semi circle as he does so. His mind is screaming at him to move and not let these _lesser beings_ dare think that they can control him. The thought throws him off enough for the Templar to get within arms length of him - close enough that Desmond could grab a hold of his soft flesh and _crush_ the weak bones hiding beneath his face _._

“A simple expedition and we stumble upon you here, right under our noses this whole time.” Rodrigo shakes his head. “Would that we were always so fortunate.”

Desmond forces his face to remain neutral at the words. His mind blares demands for him to strike the man down and beat him into an unrecognisable mess of blood and bone but he can only stare in frozen disbelief. Naked desire is uncontained in Rodrigo’s every word, his facial expressions and in his stance, like Desmond is all the power in the world made corporeal.

“Why are you here?” Desmond asks and hopes the illusion cracks at the question.

“To hear the truth from you.” Rodrigo answers immediately. “For you, oh Creator, to tell us what the messages you left behind did not.”

“The truth?” Desmond questions after a moment of pause to consider the implications of the word _creator_ and why the hell it's being used to describe him. “Which truth?”

“The Apple and its purpose.” Rodrigo answers just as quickly as before. “And where more of your artifacts are hidden.”

This is too off the rails to be an Animus fuck up - no ancestor to piggyback a connection off of and he’s pretty sure that the Templars never found a place like wherever the hell this is. It looks like a Temple but more well preserved - glowing lines of cyan light blaze around them in this cavern that they’re in and he can see a vault interface a few meters behind the Borgia guards. Wait, how the hell does he know its a vault interface? Jesus Christ he needs answers to all these fucking questions.

Desmond snaps his head back to face Rodrigo. “What year is it?” He demands and straightens his posture to exacerbate the now obvious height disparity between the two men.

“The year?” The Templar looks momentarily confused. “I do not know how your kind kept time or what difference it makes but by our calendar the year is 1476.”

Holy shit.

That’s. . .

“Not possible.” Desmond replies. His knee meets the ground and Desmond feels fire course through his veins, hot and heavy as the implications of the Templar standing across from him addressing him like Ezio did with Minerva weigh him down like nothing else ever has. He’s here, in the past somehow very much alive and the Grandmaster of the Templar Order is _right there_ in front of him.

If this really isn’t some fucked up coma dream and he’s actually here then. . .

Desmond rises to his feet, grabs the sword from Rodrigo’s scabbard and runs it through the man's heart. It cuts through the soft flesh easily - a croak of surprise and the wet sound of warm blood spurting from the fresh wound accompanies the crimson stain spreading outwards on the Grandmaster’s doublet. He twists the sword once for good measure before steadying the impaled man with his free hand and withdrawing the blade. The Templar staggers back in stunned disbelief as he watches Desmond with doomed eyes move to the nearest of his guards and cut the man down through an opening in his armour plate.

The guards are disciplined and rapidly rally to contain the new threat. Desmond slaps the counter attacking sword swung at him aside with his own like it isn’t even there and brings it down across the joining of the next enemy’s shoulder and neck with all the strength he can muster. He nearly stops in surprise when the blade bisects flesh and steel on it’s diagonal path to exit the guards hip neatly, cutting him in two, and the momentary hesitation nearly earns him a polearm through his side.

He dodges the spike even as the attached blade knicks his flesh and grabs a hold of the wooden length behind it - pulling suddenly and dragging the guard holding it into a neat impalement with his sword. The man has the courtesy to only collapse after Desmond has withdrawn his blade and blocked another being swung at his side - fist connecting with the new opponents chest hard enough that he can feel the sternum break through the armour plate.

It's easy to slip into the reflexes of three master Assassins, easier than he ever remembered it being. Block, parry and slash - stab, kick and punch. He doesn’t even feel the usual tug of his lungs devouring air like they normally do in a fight or the strain of his muscles as Desmond takes advantage of the wet surface to slide under a sword thrust and run his own through the attacker’s armour and organs like they aren’t even there.

He steps inside the guard of one of the Borgia men and punches upwards into his jaw as hard as he can. A crunch of broken bone being driven upwards into his cranium and the guard is dead before he even hits the ground. Desmond’s hand doesn’t even hurt.

He doesn’t question it as he methodically bulldozes his way through the half dozen guards that remain with unnatural speed. Armour fails, swords are parried with ease and hot blood mixes with water to decorate the temple floor in an ever expanding crimson pool until Desmond neatly slices the last mans neck open with his stolen blade.

The body drops with a clang of armour meeting ancient alloys and suddenly the cavern is deathly quiet.

Desmond drops the now ruined sword from his hand with a look and regards the carnage with equal parts appreciation and disbelief. He has never moved like that before, not even during the little incursion into Abstergo to rescue his father from Vidic, and he sure as _hell_ doesn’t remember any of his ancestors dispatching people with such ease.

His eyes fall upon the lifeless form of Rodrigo now laying in the center of fresh corpses and he makes his way over to stand above him. The older man's face is frozen in shock while his hand has slipped from where he was clutching his heart and the detail of it all dispels any remaining doubts he had about the authenticity of the reality he’s experiencing. It all smells and looks to real for an Animus to have rendered it.

Fuck, he’s really in Italy in 1476 and he just killed the leader of the Templar Order.

The thought lingers as he tears his eyes from the Grandmaster and looks around the cavern. This must be some kind of hidden Isu temple, he muses as his eyes sweep from the tank he emerged from and towards the interface he’d spotted earlier. A Temple that wasn’t on any map they’d found in their mad dash to save the world. Does Juno know of this place? Did he somehow get sent back through fucking time and she found out and sent the Templar's here?

Has he fucked history just by being here? Well of course he has, Rodrigo Borgia is fucking dead.

He looks to his hands and tries to make sense of it. His fingers almost look like how he remembers them being- same shade of skin but curiously no cuts or blemishes on his palms. It doesn’t even look like he has wrinkles where his phalanges join together and he looks to his arm to see the tattoo is gone as well. This body, whatever the hell it is, looks like it has all the weathering of a newborn and yet he’s clearly a full adult if the height is anything to go by. He’s not even going to think about how the hell he has such prominent abs now after he’d been getting all those fat jokes from Sean.

God he needs a mirror or something. Desmond feels the blood seep between his toes as he walks barefoot towards the vault control and the soft cyan lines cutting through the walls reflects off his eyes. His steps are met with a coalescence of glowing circuitry pooling and reforming around his feet with each new step and it feels. . . pleased?

The lights around him flicker, glow intensely and burst with clouds of holographic Isu characters that he can somehow parse into words, numbers, sentences and most important of all, meaning. It's not a temple he’s in but a forge - one built by the Isu Hephaestus before he was killed in their war with humanity. Desmond strains at the information flow and reaches for the console for support. They were experimenting with ways to overcome their slow reproduction - exploring the concept of cloning a host body for their minds to ‘resleeve’ into if they were ever to fall in battle. The lights must think - they thinks he’s one of them. It even supplies him with an image of his face when he thinks it and Desmond stares back at a version of himself he hasn’t seen since he looked in a motel bathroom mirror after escaping the Farm. There’s even a scar cutting through his lips.

What the _fuck_.

….More, he needs to know more. The information impresses itself upon his brain in a flood that is altogether too much and not enough. This body that somehow looks exactly like him, it's what the forge was built to produce and protect before the sun seared the Earth with flames and the facility was lost to the winds of time. He’s a hybrid like the humans that rebelled but yet more, enhanced with precursor science and kept alive all this time in stasis to wait for a master that would never come.  

Until somehow his mind was sent back in time and downloaded into it.

Desmond commands the connection to end but it refuses to obey. The words _necessary_ and _melding procedure_ are all that he’s given as the console begins to shift and reconfigure before him. The interface subdivides into impossibly small sections that retract and recede into the wall, revealing a glowing rectangular chamber that houses what Desmond knows unmistakably is a Piece of Eden.

It's no Apple, it has none of the glowing Tron lines and golden alloys that characterise each one - it looks a lot more like a belt for clothing - a simple dull silver band with scaled notchings along its surface. Its glows briefly before rising off it’s pedestal with nary a whisper, expanding in length as it covers the distance to reach Desmond. He struggles against the invisible force that’s suspended him with all the effort he can manage but the grip is too strong, too precise in where it holds him to give any leverage or advantage.

Desmond tries to scream as the belt opens and wraps around his hips before suddenly shrinking _into_ his skin. He’s being seared from the inside or something close to it as the belt disappears beneath his flesh entirely. Tendrils of silver suddenly burst forth under his skin and colour it in ever expanding lines that ripple like waves across his ribs and connect around the middle of his back.

The pain is blinding and Desmond stops looking at the lines, trying to merely keep himself from passing out. It hurts like the Eye hurt, unshackled energy consuming and destroying his insides while his nervous system turns to mush from the overload of feedback.

And then the pain simply stops.

He hits the floor hard as the force field ceases suspending him. Everywhere the tendrils of silver had spread tingles with energy - the lungs that had betrayed him now greedily devour air and his heart feels ready to burst with how fast its working.

 _Melding successful._  

The words appear in his mind and then suddenly the meaning behind them becomes clear.

Hephaestus made this forge - this Pandora’s box hidden away from prying eyes - to build weapons meant not to control but to destroy. No dalliance with synapses and mind controlling neurotransmitters like the Apple, no subtlety or grace to the purpose with which this place had been constructed. Desmond’s body is a weapon in a war long since lost and forgotten and the belt - _Herakles -_ is his armour.

More than human and more than Isu. Their strengths combined and their weaknesses discarded in a cocktail of genetic manipulation and bleeding edge technology. The first of a line of promised champions that never saw the war they were meant to win.

_Olympians._

The new tattoos running under his skin glow blue and hot as crackling tendrils of energy erupt from them and outwards to envelop the dead Borgia guards - eating away at the armour and cloth hugging the corpses like a corrosive acid until they lie naked and bare to the open air. Desmond watches in abject fascination as the material breaks down in pools of light and flood back along the crackling arcs of lighting to coalesce and take form across his own skin. Cloth, comfortable and form fitting transmutes into actual clothes and Desmond recognises the look of a streamlined version of Ezio’s Mentor outfit taking shape around his chest and arms - midnight black in place of eagle white. There’s armour plating hidden in the fabric as it assembles itself - a flexible gold in place of amber steel and its woven into every inch of the material that forms his new outfit. Slowly, Desmond watches the lightning complete its work as boots form around his feet - crackling with the smell of ozone before the the display cuts out and the tattoos return to their dull silver origins.

Desmond takes a breath, then another and rises to his feet unsteadily, carefully, like the clothes and armour now adorning him are a mountain’s worth of weight instead of a feather’s. Twin blades hidden on his wrists now there where they weren’t a minute previous- he can even see the damn gun attachments on both as he steadies himself and twists his arms to look. They're real, all of it. He’s got a Piece of Eden that can transmute raw material into clothing and weapons buried under his skin - Isu skin - and he’s in a body that makes human beings look like wet cardboard in a sword fight.

“Fucking Macguffin bullshit.”

Rodrigo, arrogant as he may be, is - was - a practical man and Desmond needs to get the fuck out of here and think this shit over. The guards Desmond had taken care of were probably Rodrigo’s most loyal lackeys and he’s doubtless got more stationed outside the forge waiting for him to get back with whatever he’s found down here. A quick check of his new clothes to make sure that yes, they are real and he’s not crazy, and a pilfering of the cooling Templars corpse reveals a map hidden in the pockets of his robe.

It’s recently drawn - the cartographer who made it most likely going for accuracy of the area around where the Forge entrance was theorised to be, while leaving out any superfluous details outside of a marked area. Huh, he’s about a days ride from Florence by the looks of things, hidden in the mountains that lead to Romagna and the rest of Tuscany. Isn’t that handy?

Was this place always here and Minerva found it and kept its existence a secret somehow? Did she fuck with time and the Eye and send him back to this failsafe? He isn’t sure, not with how he _knows_ deep down that he died with the feedback from Juno’s little trap but he isn’t going start questioning third chances now.   

“Bitch.” Desmond says as the thought of Juno leaves his mind and he looks at the map’s legend, memorising the mountain route out towards the main road because apparently that's something he can just do now. He shoves the map haphazardly into his _new_ breast pocket anyway and sighs - searching for an exit with his equally new and very upgraded sixth sense. It glows gold incessantly and Desmond takes the time to scoop up a fresh looking sword that hadn’t been immersed in First Civilisation energy bullshit in one hand, and a bloodied polearm in the other before making a beeline for it.

The cavern is a winding mess of Tron lines, mist and platforms that suddenly shift into place at his coming to form stairs that ascend steeply into the mountain rock. Desmond takes them in leaps and bounds and the narrow cavern walkways soon branch outwards - rays of daylight streaming in where the mountain meets the open sky.

There’s a pair of guards leaning lazily across the rectangular entrance, clearly bored with the thrilling minutiae of life happening outside the dull looking forge entrance and expecting the footfalls of plated boots to be warning enough of their boss’s return. Desmond doesn’t give them a chance to regret the error as he rams the spike at the end of the polearm straight through the back of the one to his left and buries his new sword clean through the others neck.

They don’t even scream, they can’t when Desmond has severed one’s spine and the other no longer has vocal cords to scream with. They drop with the all the grace of dead men as Desmond’s weapons retreat from their flesh and he walks out into the Italian sun. Its irritatingly bright and the beaked hood saves him from the worst of its assault - his eyes adjusting after a few moments to show a company of very surprised Borgia guard noticing the clunking sound of their now very dead comrades hitting soft earth.

Oh good, Desmond thinks as he surveys the assortment of them, they have horses and supplies. That will do very nicely he muses as he readies his sword and flips his grip with the polearm, sending it flying into the chest of one very unlucky guard before leaping to kill the rest.


	2. Runaway Goliath

Smoke billows from the fire consuming the travel carts - thick and noxious - with plumes that reach high into the mountain air. Sunlight glints off Borgia steel, the smell of the dead rising to smother the Templar camp in the pungent odour of flesh burning away in the heat. Desmond ignores it - a talent learned from multiple lives lived in life’s fleeting company - and continues to strip away the valuables from the fallen, arranging them in a heap on a waiting cart once he’s pilfered them of coin and anything else he might need.

Rodrigo arrived here loaded for bear it seems. The full company at his back had brought enough food, water and other essentials for a small siege and Desmond has no doubt that they would have committed to one if they needed to. Strange that, he hadn’t thought the Spaniard had the resources for that kind of deployment until he’d become Pope and gone all dictator on Rome. The sheer quality of the arms equipping the guards implied the Templars even now had a lot of fingers in a lot of pockets and weren’t skimping out on weapons and armour at least.

Not that any of it had helped them. For all the care and elegance of their armour, for all the oaths sworn and curses muttered in battle, they had died by his hand just as easily as the humblest and poorest of men. It’s a bit disturbing to reflect on - this new prowess and power within him - how easily the human race could have been snuffed out if Pandora’s box had been opened and weapons like what he now is had been used in battle.

Battle.

Could he even grace what had happened here with such a title? A battle implies things like a tangible possibility of victory being attained by either side - of odds and skill sets and equipment being utilised to swing a pendulum towards a desired outcome. Strategic and tactical surprise, types of terrain, leadership and numbers and experience and so many other things being leveraged until finally one side breaks and either retreats, surrenders or is destroyed. That’s what the title of battle implies.

A massacre is something very different to that. What had he looked like to the Borgia guards when he’d emerged from a hole in the ground to exact bloody retribution upon them? Did the first dozen of them have any comprehension of what they were facing before he cut them down? Did the first fifty? Perhaps if they had, they would have spat on their oaths, gathered their horses and fled.

Desmond doesn’t know if he believes in the concept of souls with all that he’s seen but he does know one thing now - this vessel he inhabits is not meant for a peaceful life. His mind had been subverted with the design of his new brain during the violence - walled off to the notion of compassion and mercy as hot blood had kissed his face and coated his sword - such concepts served no purpose being present in a weapon of war after all.

It's like the Animus had been - the first one - unnecessary details exorcised from the experience, no time for superfluous things like faces in a crowd or the vulnerable moments of Altaïr’s life that weren’t spent chasing Eden’s treasures. Desmond had fought like the Animus had felt all those months ago, clinical and far removed from the humanity of it all.

There had been no time to recognise the terror in a man’s face as Desmond had cut open his stomach, no attention spared to hear the cry of pain from another as Desmond had shattered the bones in his arm and driven a hidden blade into his back. No effort devoted to wondering about the final thoughts of a guard before he had Desmond's hidden gun beneath his neck and a bullet tunneling through and out his brain.

Desmond has the details now. They’re wrapped in the same layers that his memories of the Farm come to him in - processed and scarred over with the march of time. The feeling is at odds with the corpses piled on the cart in front him, no freshness to the trauma like the butchering he had just performed thirty minutes prior demands they have.

Desmond demands it as well, demands to feel something other than indifference and a heartbeat that doesn’t seem to rise for anything.

Neither demands are met and so the flames from the torch in his hand lick greedily at the wood and cloth he’d stuffed in between the pile of bodies, jumping from it to ignite and begin the process of rendering the dead immolated and safe from being harbingers of disease. Desmond watches the flames climb the pile in resignation and turns away when he starts to hear the crackles of flesh popping from the heat.

What a waste. Led by a monster in search of power only to be struck down by another monster wielding it. A cruel fate, but at least Desmond can take some satisfaction in having robbed God’s chosen man of his life and designs for future cruelty. He’d hauled out the bloated and rigid body of the Grandmaster earlier, when reality had returned to his brain and he had retrieved the dead Templar from the mountain depths and propped his corpse against one of the carts, taking a moment to just stare at his face.

The man had caused so much grief for Ezio and the rest of Italy. He’d been ruthless in his pursuit of the Apple and the secrets of the Vault and yet there he had sat like any dead man would. Cold, withering and drained of life, Rodrigo Borgia had looked like no puppeteer or ruthless autocrat - merely a shallow husk slowly starting to decompose in the Italian sun.

“Be at peace.” Desmond had said, borrowing Altaïr’s proclamation as he closed eyes devoid of life. “For all that you did, for all that would have done, rest now. You’ll not profit from suffering any longer.”

The corpse had remained mockingly silent at the words. No great soliloquy had come forth from Rodrigo’s lips, no expression of regret like the men on Altaïr’s list had sometimes professed as their lives slipped away. The Templar had just been lifeless flesh. Desmond had spared a few minutes to commit the sight and disappointment to memory before stripping the man of valuables and hauling him onto the bed of the first cart he’d burned. 

And so Desmond now walked, head full of questions and torch still in hand as he continued with his scorching of the Earth. The process is mind numbing but he has the forethought in spite of all his worries to acknowledge that people will come to investigate the slowly climbing pillars of smoke currently rising into the air. Be they Templars or curious explorers, Desmond has no wish to spread disease or leave behind any clue that an Assassin - or a group of them - may have been responsible for the mess.

He just wished it wasn’t taking so damn long. The thing that every Animus had conveniently glossed over is how much time everything seemed to take. So much time spent just looking for things that might be of use, more to dispose of the evidence and more still to mentally catalogue what he already has for the ride to Florence.

Time, time and yet more time.

He does have some help though. If he were still in his old - original -  human body, the task would have forced him to spend the day completing it but his eyes, still fresh to the world and augmented with technology beyond the mere men of this time and his help cut it down to a manageable length. No longer does he have to consciously concentrate on the environment for items of interest - now he’s just aware of it all - little pings in his mind’s radar. The guard twenty feet away carries knives that are excellent for throwing, the wagon beyond that is filled with water skins and yet more little things that register a helpful white in his brain and his vision. At least there’s some upside to Desmond 2.0.

Still.

He is here, in reality, not as a projection of technology but in the flesh. The Animus conveyed the imitation of senses, yes, but it could never mimic the vibrancy of actually experiencing it. The smell of the grass, the cool wind fighting against the heat of the sun, the crunch of the ground beneath his feet, all so unmistakably authentic.

Hephaestus or whoever the hell made this weird imitation clone of him must have done something else to his brain to go with the whole emotionless robot routine because wherever he looks, whether it be at the pile of swords and other weapons he’s assembled or the saddle bag he’s currently tying off, his mind supplies information on how to improve them, to perfect their construction well beyond the standards of this time.

Is this how Da Vinci felt, constantly under the barrage of thoughts on how things could simply be _better_?

Perhaps.

And then there’s Florence which he’s planning to go to and do _what_ exactly? Tell Ezio or his father or god knows who’s in charge right now that hey, he’s an assassin from the future and to please help him change the entire course of history so that the sun doesn’t completely fuck the whole planet? The same sun that they still think goes around the Earth because Copernicus is only three goddamn years old right now?

It's not like he isn’t thankful, dying wasn’t exactly in the list of top ten things he wanted to do before thirty but now he’s five hundred years in the past with no support network, a few hundred looted florins to his name and with just the clothes on his back. Clothes that were transmuted by a Piece of Eden - which is still very much _inside him_ \- but still, the reality of it stands.

Jesus Christ, it's almost enough to make him wish for the simplicity of being a bartender again.  

Desmond saddles the bag atop the horse he’s singled out as gently as he can manage and turns his thoughts from his situation back to the Forge entrance. The grey materials that characterised all of the Isu construction he’d seen seems muted now, lifeless. Perhaps the Forge had been running solely to preserve Desmond’s body until it’s activation and now just shut down, its task fulfilled.

It feels irresponsible to just leave it like this, he thinks as he walks over to it. He should be combing the place over for whatever clues it has on how he’s here and then tearing it apart if the gentle approach fails. He could do it too, he suspects there's very little that the forge could do to resist his efforts with what he’s now capable of and he can practically hear Shaun and Rebecca telling him how stupid he’d be to not go back down there but he just. . .

Desmond palms a section of rock with his hand and the desire to seal off the cavern below thrumming in his thoughts. The interface hums - _with delight_ \- and Desmond feels the rumble of stone shifting behind it once he removes his palm, emerging from the mountainside to cocoon the entryway behind a plethora of rocks and rapidly hardening sediment. And where there proudly glowed a cavern that hummed with ancient promise, there is now merely just another section of mountain rock.

 _Later_.

The promise isn’t hard to make and lock away, running away is all he’s really done with his life till recently. Running away through time from his fated death is just icing on the proverbial cake.

Interfacing leaves a coppery after taste in his mouth as he withdraws his hand, the grass feeling soft under his feet and the crackling of hearty fires growing around him as he turns about - arms crossed around his chest and walks back to the waiting horse with his head held low.

He has enough supplies to leave now - he had enough an hour ago but leaving this little stage of carnage means committing to this reality and trying to change things more than he already has. It's stupid and he knows it. It was stupid when he felt this way all the way back when he was escaping the Farm and trudging through miles of forest and darkness, a little piece of him wanting to huddle away and just keep the world out.

Figures that he would be walled off from grief and regret but anxiety and all those other very human feelings remain, new body or no.

The horses whinny and nicker when they hear him approach. Cute things they are, pity that he can’t take them all and just open up a stable somewhere, give in to that little voice gnawing at the back of his mind telling him to do just that. Desmond retrieves the dagger hidden under his coat and gently cuts the ropes binding each to the cart he’s left alone. They’re well trained things, waiting for instruction even with nothing to keep them there and Desmond smiles as he cajoles them with sharp words and firm pats to their flanks to travel back along the path the Borgia had carved into the soft hills and out to freedom.

And they do, dutiful things to a fault, they take instruction even without riders upon their backs. Desmond watches them go and gives one last look at the burning carnage surrounding him before he climbs atop his chosen steed and does the same.

 

* * *

 

Florence is a long ride away. Its longer still given how much his horse has to carry in addition to its rider and once again Desmond finds himself missing the Animus shortcuts. Though he doesn’t miss the surgical precision that Vidic had with ordering the removal of ‘superfluous’ moments in Altaïr’s life, he can appreciate the fact he never had to trudge about the Holy Land for what would have been weeks of travel time. This is the first time Desmond has even ridden a horse in real life for crying out loud, time travelling cowboy he is not.

The mountain air is brisk against his face and Desmond shoves the annoyance to the back of his mind, eager to put as much distance between him and the burning camp as he can afford. No doubt the Templars had a system of messengers going back and forth between their base in Florence and the hillside camp and it wouldn’t be long before someone came searching. Desmond can only hope he’s landed in this time before the end of the year had occurred. If it's really early then the Templar power base in the city would still be taking hold and the Pazzi conspiracy is either about to occur or is still in the planning stages.

They’re far from the marshaled army hiding under the banner of a holy cross like they were in the Crusades and now that Desmond has taken care of their grandmaster, he can hopefully count on squabbling and infighting running rife within their ranks until a new leader is selected.

Hopefully.

Things are never certain when it comes to the Templars and the Pazzi family and doubly so with the Auditore’s being who they are. Shit, he’s going to have to kill the Gonfalonier if things are too far along and then try to explain to GIovanni why he just killed one of his most trusted allies.

Joy.

Riding in the mountains is an uneventful affair. Blessedly few travelers wander this section of the road with their carts and steeds and those that do not grow anxious at his fleeting presence keep a stern eye to the man sporting a bandits armament over noble clothing. Desmond gives them the bare minimum of acknowledgement as he passes them by and his hearing picks up more than a few comments about ‘a fool with two swords’ when they think him out of earshot.

Time presses on. The reality of the distance he has to travel becoming increasingly apparent and the lengthening of shadows late in the afternoon has Desmond accepting defeat. Yeah, maybe it was a little optimistic of him to expect he could reach Florence in a day but he’s been having a weird run of luck lately so he wanted to try.

He’s at least out of the mountain roads by the time dusk starts to fall and finding an Inn in the towns along the main road isn’t hard with all the traffic that’s pouring in from the rest of Tuscany. Florence, after all, is the beating heart of the Renaissance right now and it seems that in spite of capitalism still being in its natal stages, there isn’t a lack of entrepreneurs looking to make a bit of coin from all those travelers on the roads.

Legally of course, no highwaymen to be found around here.

Dusk trickles into night and it’s only when Desmond enters the limits of Prato that he softens the pace and heads into the settlement to look for accommodation. It's a quaint little trading town, no longer the free city it had been nine decades prior but being pulled into Florence’s trade orbit has somewhat made up for it. Must have been paying attention to one of Shaun’s downtime lectures to know that he reasons.

Desmond ventures off the main thoroughfare and a few minutes of wandering about has him pulling up to an unremarkable two storey Inn that looks like it's seen better days. Desmond gives his horse a gentle word of thanks as he ties it next to the watering trough in the adjoining stable and heads inside to see about a room.

Contrary to the picture painted by the exterior with the layer of grime covering the natural cream of the brick and the dirt hugging the few windows, the Inn interior is actually rather lovely. A large fire crackles softly off to the side and there’s only a few weary travelers taking advantage of the bar and tables to add to the noise.

He’s too weathered from the day’s events to even bother haggling with the innkeep and acquiesces to the clearly overpriced fee with a handful of coin and a new memory of the owners surprise morphing towards clear satisfaction. Desmond gives him another handful to feed and shelter his horse and bring food to his room in a little while before disappearing down the dimly lit hallway towards it.

Said room is surprisingly not terrible. A few decent looking beds hug the corner wall and the small fireplace resides at the center provides light alongside the half dozen candles sprinkled on various bedside tables. There’s enough room for a handful of people and Desmond doesn’t feel so bad about the fee when he realises it was high because of his demand for privacy.

The door bolt slides into place with a weighty thunk and Desmond. . .

Desmond let’s go.

Strange thing that, to register muscles relaxing and tension slipping away when your heart outright refuses to change it's pace. Do Isu not need increased blood flow when they exert themselves or is his body, like his whole being here, an impossibility?

The soft hint of smoke from the candles accompanies the view of the rafters, flickering lights battling the blanket of darkness that cuts long shadows across his face whenever it can. It's a simple thing, a plain visual statement constantly making the point that this world, this time he’s found himself in has no knowledge of electricity beyond the spectacle of a lightning strike.

Its a level of ignorance Desmond can relate to.

Shaun had once tried to theorise the way the Isu managed to manipulate time and sprinkle their little doomsday warnings throughout history but Desmond had found himself lost within the first five minutes of it all, hadn’t had the education to follow along like Rebecca and his Father did. It's a frustrating memory, one to go along with the countless dozens he’s locked away throughout his life but he wishes he had been able to follow along like the others had, could figure out the _how_ of it all and maybe use it to work out the _why_ of him being here.

His hand slips beneath the fabric of his transmuted doublet and palms the skin hugging his chest in search of the myriad of scars that he knows aren’t there. No slight hitches in the texture of his skin registers to his touch, merely unblemished uniformity beneath the glide of his fingers. The apparent ease with which he’s been stripped of something that makes him _him_ leads to Desmond removing the top half of his outfit in muted outrage.

Save for the silver of his new tattoos, there’s not even a nick of damage to be found. No marks on his ribs from where he’d fallen through the barn roof as child, no burns or cuts from the invasion of Abstergo. Even the area on his side where he had been clipped by the polearm blade is devoid of a scar and soft to the touch.

There’s nothing to suggest Desmond is anything other than a spoiled nobleman trotting about with an abundance of coin and a sword he has no idea how to use.

No, not even a nobleman, he looks young enough to be someone’s son if the face he saw in the Forge was anything to go by. Add in his style of dress and the tanned complexion and then the tattoos on top of everything else and yeah, Desmond’s probably lucky somebody hasn’t seen him topless because he doubts their response will be anything other than summoning a priest and some guards to come burn him at the stake for witchcraft.

He suppresses to grab the nearest object and hurl it at the wall and digs his nails into the flesh around his hips instead. Pink crescents form to accompany the slight sting of pain and Desmond vaguely registers the slight trickle of blood coating his fingertips and lets the precious liquid run down and stain his trousers. There’s various spiderwebs of crimson marking his clothes when he finally relents and wipes his hands on the discarded doublet.

Having things taken from him isn’t a new feeling. He was deprived a chance at a normal existence, kidnapped by Abstergo, robbed of his life by a choice that wasn’t, hasn’t even been granted the permanence of death and now - save for the one that cuts through his lips - he doesn’t even have the symbolism of his scars to call his own.

Can he not call anything his own?

Of course not, he’s Desmond Miles.

But technically, that’s not true anymore, is it? Desmond hasn’t been Desmond since he woke up in that tube and killed Rodrigo Borgia. No, now he’s something far _more_ . Despite whatever trepidations he may have over destroying a company of Borgia guardsmen, there’s no denying that this new body of his allows him to entertain certain . . . _possibilities._

There’s no solar flare coming for at least a few hundred years and Juno’s little veil of deception isn’t going to railroad him into sacrificing himself to save the world again. It’s thrilling in a way he hasn’t known since he felt the first touch of freedom at seventeen, this realisation that Desmond can potentially save _everyone_.

Only problem being that he doesn’t have an explanation for, well, himself.

Hmm, just what is Desmond Miles doing in Assassin’s garb wandering around Florence, looking fresh faced and not even out of his teens yet?

It wouldn’t be much of a stretch to borrow a page out of Altair’s book and say that he’s from Masyaf - what remains of the Assassins there are probably still orthodox enough to train their initiates from childhood - and his skin makes it obvious he isn’t a local. Maybe he can even spin a story about seeking the pages of his Ancestor’s long lost codex while he’s at it.

It could work, the Brotherhood is still a loose confederation of regional chapters in this time so their information sharing is pretty barebones. They haven’t been whipped them up into the coordinated body yet like Ezio did when he became Mentor so even if his background isn’t water tight, he could still get what he needs done before Giovanni or whoever can think to send a message back to the Holy Land inquiring about his background.

Warmth blossoms across his chest and the highways of silver running underneath his skin before Desmond looks to see small tendrils of cohesive lightning snaking out of his palm to cover the small gap between him and his bedside table. He’s too taken aback by how calmly the energy pools around the table top and burrows into the wooden frame - disappearing beneath the surface before the tendrils thicken and retreat from the piece of furniture, taking a rectangular form in his hand that slowly starts to feel solid as the glow around it begins to recede.

Then, without fanfare, the light simply cuts out and Desmond finds himself looking at a sheet of paper in his hand a pencil that looks suspiciously like the one he kept on hand during his bar tending days in New York but that shouldn't be-

“Possible.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait, had to deal with my final stage of tertiary studies which got in the way of everything. Thanks for all your awesome comments on the last chapter.


	3. Chapter 3

Florence is strange.

Or rather, the cacophony of emotions that it evokes make for a strange first impression. He can recognise the slight tingle that accompanies the presence of the bleeding effect, rationally isolate the supreme sense of _home_ wrapped around him as something that Ezio would have felt whenever he thought of Florence at this stage of his life.

He can even objectively realise that the representation of it shown to him in the Animus was obviously limited to what the hardware could support but still, the logic of it doesn’t really matter. It can’t, not when he feels as he did exploring the catacombs beneath Monteriggioni and saw the ghost of Ezio around every corner.

He’s grateful for the sheer amount of foot traffic, that people don’t have the time or inclination to notice his minor emotional crisis amongst the humdrum of the city entrance. They go about their day and tend to their very real lives with not a care for the somewhat strange looking man craning his head to better take in the scene of Florence’s west gate.

Entry to the city had required little more than a simple bribe and a few words between him and the guards stationed at the gate, as well as enduring the curious gaze they’d directed towards the dual swords affixed to his back. Being yelled at by a cart driver is the point where Desmond decides he’s gawked enough, slipping into the crowd with but an adjustment to his hood and a quiet thanks to the training Paola had impressed upon Desmond through Ezio.

The familiarity of everything is disconcerting rather than soothing like it should be, the cry of the various heralds on their assigned streets a surreal soundtrack to the hustle and bustle of the city. He approaches one of them during a break in their declarations, Florins in hand enough of a reason for the man to answer the unusual question such a hefty amount of presented coinage would require. It’s the first day of October, 1476.

Desmond does his best not to let the surprise on his face show and thanks the man before turning back towards the main street. He’s early. Really early. The Auditore’s don’t get massacred until the end of the year and Desmond. . . can do a lot with that kind of leeway. He could stop the conspiracy cold - kill its members in a single night with a body that is quite frankly overkill for such a task. He can even save Ezio's family from their fate with but a piece of paper sent to Giovanni and Lorenzo de' Medici  - change history more than he already has and let his meddling in time run its course.

All these possibilities lie before him, all these little threads he need only grasp and run with. Strange thing to be afraid of after spending the better part of your life being a pawn of fate with no clear paths to tread and a thick permeating fog hiding the future from sight. Now swords and guns and ancient orbs aren’t the things scaring him, its freedom of choice.

Yeah, he can already hear Juno laughing. Bitch.

Minor emotional crisis sent to the back burner, he spends the rest of the day getting the necessities sorted out. A place to stay is easy to find, one that affords him a bit of privacy in the same vein as the Inn in Plato? Not so much. Perhaps it should come as no surprise when he finds a suitable arrangement in the San Giovanni district of all places but by that point, he can’t really bring himself to care.

The night spent in Prato means he’s ready for the raised brow of the Innkeeper when he asks for a singular room and the following willingness to accommodate him when he flashes enough coin for a week’s stay in advance. A few more Florins leads to a bath being prepared in his room and a hot meal to eat while he waits for the former to be filled.

The food is surprisingly good. A hearty bowl of soup accompanied by some bread and an assortment of cheeses that make him grateful he’s in Italy with all their knowledge of seasoning and spices. He eats quickly, earning a few looks from the maids ferrying buckets of hot water into the tub as he wolfs down his food like common man instead of the nobility his clothing implies. He doesn't fret, apologising for his manners with a bit of Ezio’s  borrowed charm, and thanks them for all their work.

Desmond rapidly strips as soon as the last of the maids exit his room and greedily submerges as much of himself as he can in the water, eager to let the mucky combination of sweat, dirt and stasis tank fluids roll off his skin in the heat. A hot bath seems to be a universally appreciated thing, regardless of what species partakes in it. Desmond soaks, taking the time to examine himself now that the filth clinging to him is being defeated. His new tattoos are a simple flat silver like the tron lines of the Forge, and if there are any patterns in the colour, he can't seem to find them no matter where he looks.

Disappointed, he moves on. The level of muscle he’s rocking make it somewhat difficult to accurately tell but yeah, there’s definitely something solid wrapping around his abdominal cavity, right where his tattoos converge and join. This Piece of Eden, this belt of Herakles or whatever, he hadn’t seen any mention of it whenever he’d had time with the Apple - no mention of Hephaestus either. There’s not much he can do about getting it out of him now though, not unless he wants to risk undergoing surgery with this time period's level of medical knowledge - what little there is - and something tells him the piece won’t take kindly to that.

So Desmond bathes until he starts to prune and the water goes cold, abandoning the tub and cloaking himself in his Assassin garb with a mental note to acquire some more clothes. The new sense of cleanliness and satisfaction of sated hunger do their bit to quiet the thrumming of new questions under his skin, but It's the feel of the afternoon breeze kissing his face as he runs across the rooftops of Florence, roof tiles blessedly familiar beneath his feet that makes said questions mere background noise in his mind.

God he’s missed this. It's almost nostalgic, to leap from one building to the next with a grace borrowed from others and morphed into his own. He almost laughs when he sees that rooftop gardens are actually a thing and not a holdover bit of code from his explorations of Altaïr's memories.

Chimneys and hanging flower pots serve as ramps and swings and it's so easy to slip back into the simplicity of free running, the ease of it in the new body that’s been crafted for him lead to a level of daring he hasn’t felt since New York and its towers of glass. Seeing it from up high confirms that Florence certainly is bigger than he remembers, not condensed down like it must have been in the Animus version, an actual city with space for the tens of thousands who call it home.

It fucks with his internal compass to the point where he resorts to navigating by sight rather than memory, digging his fingers into the various hand holds available as he flies across the city. That sense of _home_ is still hugging him tightly, giving colour to the world around him. Desmond can feel the possibilities the city buzzes with.

Eventually, said possibilities lead him to the collection of buildings surrounding the Santa Maria del Fiore and the place where he knows he’ll be able to most efficiently get the lay of the city and all that reside within it.  The retreating evening light keeps him obscured as he makes the climb up the length of the Campanile di Giotto - the effort of doing so shown in leaps and bounds, boots and hands finding purchase in the stonework with faultless regularity.

A little bit of New York again comes to mind as he crests the top of the tower, it's internals laid bare to the elements through the opening in the center and looks upon Florence in all its glory. The unobstructed sun, the slight howl of the wind, the commanding view of thousands of examples of Renaissance architecture, it all makes the memories of Ezio coming here seem so lacking in comparison.

It hits him just how shallow an experience the Animus really was, even Rebecca’s with all of it's upgrades and quality of life touches. He can’t blame her for it's failings though, hell, he can’t even blame Abstergo and their version of the machine. Neither were built with the purpose of full five sense sight seeing in mind, only to impart skills and view memories to the user - anything beyond that was just a bonus for Desmond.

Yet standing there and looking at a real life part of human history laid bare before him, a small part of his mind can’t help but draw the comparison between himself and the Animus. It seems like a waste for it to be him being given the gift of seeing all of this, to look upon it and not be able to fully appreciate the significance such a sight deserves. Shaun should be there with him, readily pointing out every little detail Desmond’s eyes would simply gloss over in ignorance and throwing his hands in the air in frustration when Desmond fails to comprehend it all and Rebecca telling him to 'chill out, dude'.

They should both be there with him.

He kneels near the opening in the roof, palm flat against the stone and channels the sensation that came to him that night in Prato into the building itself. It returns after a moment, a minute glow that crests the edge of his fingers for a few seconds, just enough time for his mind to know the small alteration to one of the internal bricks is complete. A thin sheen of sweat coating his brow shines in the waning sun - his arm now slightly numb as he moves to stand once more.

Massaging his bicep, he smiles at the thought of someone hundreds of years from now finding the names of Shaun Hastings and Rebecca Crane inscribed into the surface of the brick and turns back towards the waiting plank jutting out from the edge of the rooftop. The wind whistles as he settles into the crouch and all becomes still as the amber bleeds into his eyes.

Colour is smothered as the city is rendered in crisp grey scale, the boundary of his gift expanding from the tower point to steadily encompass all of Florence in its grasp. The gold in his vision is practically singing - calling for him - demanding he turn his focus to the various points scattered across the urban landscape. Desmond does so and the gold rewards him richly. Awareness of just what he’s looking at trickles in like a freshly unearthed memory and he has to steady himself at the sensation of it all.

They’re all Codex pages, humming in his pseudo vision and waiting for him. Such is the importance they hold in Desmond’s mind that in some cases the gold _vibrates_. God, some of them aren’t even separated yet, they’re just being held in nondescript safe houses across the city for Christ’s sake.

Does Giovanni even know? Do the Templars have any idea of the power in those pages? If they did,  they’d have stormed Monteriggioni and killed the Auditore’s here long ago.

Desmond is over the side before he can stop himself, the force of the motion measured in such a way that he easily lands in the waiting cart of hay with only a few startled gasps from people nearby to market the act. A few seconds more has him ducking into an alley and scaling it's walls to reach the roof above, legs already propelling him into an enhanced sprint. Desmond races to the nearest source of gold at the edge of the city, to the siren call of the precious artifact demanding he take it out of enemy hands. Even with his new legs, it takes a while to reach the city edge and find a perch above his target and already the light of day has finally slipped beneath the horizon and surrendered the sky to its nightly keeper.

The house itself is painfully ordinary and unobtrusive, tucked away in a small side street away from the busier areas of foot traffic. It’s altogether unremarkable, save for the two plain clothed guards with swords at their hips standing disinterestedly nearby.

A flash of his sight shows the house to be devoid of life, only the pulsing golden chest tucked away in the entrance registers any importance. This whole setup, it's just so damn sloppy. They aren’t city guards, their demeanour and seeming lack of discipline or forethought leading him to conclude that they’re either mercenaries or Pazzi lackeys who haven’t been told that Assassins tend to approach from above, not at ground level.

He scans for any other figures shrouded in red before he goes over the side as quietly as he can, transmuted boots making no sound when they meet the earth. The night is clouded and young and the lack of moonlight mixed with the blackness of his robes make him look more like a wraithful apparition than an Assassin. Desmond weaves his way towards the door out of sight of the guards, careful to make sure his approach doesn't draw unwanted eyes and ears.

The guards stand idle, their boredom genuine as they watch the alleys that lead to the house, blissfully unaware of his approach. He takes advantage of the amateurish mistake to sidle up to the door and its lock, palm flat against the keyhole.

It's his first try at consciously using the transmutation bullshit he can now apparently do to manipulate something this complex, willing the lock mechanism to be made inert with a muted flash of light he keeps veiled beneath his palm. The metal warms to the touch after a few seconds and while he _could_ simply apply some steadily increasing pressure and break the door open, he opts to indulge in the space magic that is his life now. A quiet _click_ , an end to the light in his palm and a feeling of fresh exertion signal the success of his efforts and he slips inside with nary a sound, door closing gently behind him.

His sixth sense pings the interior of the structure while looking for any change in the guards emotions. He finds none in the latter while the chest hidden beneath the front desk blares out a welcome to him, inviting him to come and retrieve the treasures within. Desmond wastes no time, opting to forgo the space bullshit and grasp the chest with both hands at the seams and rip apart the lock holding everything in place. It groans in protest at his efforts but it was never designed to withstand something like him, giving way after a few seconds of effort on his part.

It feels too damn easy to slip the precious pages of parchment into the folds of his robe and search the office for anything he might have missed. Really, had the Templars always been this lax with their secrets before Rodrigo's paranoia had seeped into every facet of their operations?

Desmond doesn’t care to dwell on his good fortune before he closes the chest and slides it back under the desk, rising back to his feet and making his way silently through the front door after a cautious eagle vision check. A detour into a waiting side path and he is back on the rooftops, gone from the scene entirely.

He dashes away with unnatural speed and takes in the exhilaration of it all. Crossing Florence is _fun_ , much more so when he can maintain a far faster pace with the greater distances he can leap and the lack of any exhaustion from the exercise is just the icing on the proverbial cake. He tries his best to maintain a stealthy profile at such a pace, his speed too quick for anyone watching from below to get an appreciable look at a mass of black clothing leaping distances no human has any business crossing and just lets himself run.

The other codex pages are scattered across the city and Desmond spends the rest of the night hunting them down from their unwitting owners. He takes care in his approach, never allowing himself to be seen and rendering what few guards that stand watch none the wiser to his endeavors. It feels like cheating to be honest, how easily all the priceless pages of knowledge find their way into the secure linings of his robe but then again, perhaps he deserves to have certain things on easy mode after all the bullshit he’s put up with recently.

Its well into the early morning when Desmond finds himself perched opposite a building swirling with red and gold, both colours competing for priority in his mind eye. The Palazzo Pazzi-Quaratesi looks a lot like the Auditore version, square in shape with three storeys of height and a large open air courtyard that divides the place in the center - uncomfortably familiar save for the difference in the crest that adorns the outer flags and balconies on the uppermost floor.

No bars on the doors or windows and no archers waiting on the roof on watch. It would look out of place, he supposes, with how few Pazzi guards he’s been seeing on the streets and dearth of them on Florence’s rooftops - like the family have something to fear or hide. Pity for them that they’re right.

The gold of the remaining codex blooms in one of the rooms on the eastern side of the imitation castle and Desmond checks to see who’s actually home which surprisingly, doesn’t return much of anything. Where the hell is the Pazzi family if not in their home at this hour? He _concentrates_ , let’s his sense escape the confines of his immediate surroundings and spread outwards in a rippling wave of awareness.

He’s tried this sort of thing in the past - or is it the future now? - where he tried to push the distance of what his sense can catalogue. Ezio had done something like it but in the reverse when he’d ventured to Constantinople and Cyprus, hyper focusing the sense in a small area on a specific target to gauge intentions and likely actions. It's a useful tool, one that Desmond immersed himself in briefly when he confronted Vidic and sated himself with the realisation and fear wafting off the man before he died.

This though is far less personal than that or even regular eagle sense. No emotions or personality registers from the people catalogued by the ever expanding area he’s attuning himself too, just locations and people painted in shades of grey as Desmond grits his teeth and continues to push.

The minutes tick by and no golden positive pings his sense despite how far he’s managed to extend the range and so Desmond reels it back in, brings his mind back to his body and let’s the feedback of it all wash over him. It's different from the tower, searching for something specific instead of letting the city tell it's story. A hangover style headache that leaves him more annoyed than anything because really, if you’re going to breed a line of super soldiers, shit like this should be ironed out before production started.

Despite the pain, there’s clearly no Pazzi members present in the surrounding area and he doubts this will take so long that he needs to worry about being ambushed. Desmond abandons his perch and takes his time rounding the Palazzo to face the side where Francesco has his personal study located and the occasional scans show the few guard patrols present seem content to keep to their small quarters on the ground floor rather than station themselves outside the room itself.

At least he wouldn't have to worry about guards making the rounds if he were to pay a visit to the room and he seriously doubts the guards would risk the wrath of their benefactor to inspect a sound from said room. It's all the reassurance he needs.

A suitable amount of distance to build up momentum and Desmond flies across the street onto the balcony directly outside the study - ducking into a roll and ending in a crouch as he scans to check if anyone noticed the noise. The lack of any change is confirmation enough to take hold of the door and push, wood and iron quietly protesting his insistent efforts until it gives, the lock snapping out of place and falling on the floor with a solid _clunk._

He cringes at the noise, scanning again for any notice of his entry. The sound must not have been loud enough to register and he relaxes, his eyes feasting on the room itself. It’s in full Renaissance style, paintings and other decorations from local artists adorn the walls and expensive looking rugs cover the marble and terracotta tiles from dirt as much as possible. Various assortments of weapons are hung as well, everything from lowly daggers to an impressively heavy looking mace.

It’s gaudy in a way, like the decorator just picked what looked nice and didn’t bother to theme it any dominant way. A mirage of sophistication rather than a room belonging to a man of actual taste. Fitting summary for Francesco, really.

Desmond allows himself a moment to take it in before bee-lining for the codex page locked away in of the many drawers of the central desk. It's locked, predictably, a quick look through his sight shows the mechanism to be quite a bit more complicated than the one he transmuted open earlier. Scowling, Desmond pushes away from the desk and retrieves the broken lock lying at the balcony door. Years of being on the run had taught him a thing or two about the details of a lockpick set and he pulls the memory forward, channeling it into the hunk of iron with the desire to transmute the latter into the former.

It hurts, his fingers feel like they’ve got a thousand cuts that go straight through his nerves and the glow flickers at the strain he’s enduring. He claspes his wrist and bites down, desire turning to demand for this fucking thing to just work and give him the stupid set already. The pain has reached halfway up his forearm before the task is down, shavings of the inner iron now a tidy set of hooks he can use.

With a curse and spasming arm in tow, he sets to work on the desk lock, actual tools and eagle sense turning a complicated obstacle into a non issue with a little bit of time. He relieves the Codex page from its refuge with a huff, angrily stowing it away in his inner pocket and with the rapidly deadening sensation in his arm, looks to the stack of paper sitting neatly atop the desk.

Shit, he’ll have to make a forgery, won't he? He can’t risk a preemptive move by the Pazzi if they think Giovanni’s been here and invaded their sanctum. Fuck, if he doesn’t, they’ll be prompted to check the other repositories upon discovering this particular theft. Goddammit, he’s not some novice, why the hell didn’t he think this through? Scowling, he grabs as much paper as he needs and places it in the drawer, spasming palm laid flat across the assortment. One breath. Two breathes. Pain.

It's just a matter of simple inscriptions but it feels like his hand has been stabbed. Shooting pain races up his arm straight to his chest and he bites down hard enough on his lip to feel the flesh tear and taste the blood. Three seconds, the longest passage of time he’s felt in his entire fucking life is what it takes to make the forgery and Desmond nearly cries when the pain stops. His chin is trickling with blood, the vital liquid slowly dripping onto his coat in expanding crimson blossoms and his arm is completely numb.

He can feel his clothes clinging to him with sweat, a level of exertion he hasn’t felt since waking up now very much making its presence known. His hip bones feel hot, his chest tight with tension and his vision dips rapidly in and out of clarity. God he hasn’t felt anything remotely approaching this since the Eye. Using the desk as a crutch provides stability until the impairment to his vision slowly recedes and his head stops swimming, a clear view of the still very much broken door being the first thing he can concentrate on.

Fuck. He forgot about the fucking door.

He seals the drawer, hefts the broken lock from the floor in his good hand and makes his way to the door, a colourful litany of whispered curses accompanying him. He shoves the lock into the broken opening, gathering as many loose pieces of wood from the floor that he can see and assembles them in a heap in his dead hand, slowly hefting it up towards the broken section with his functioning hand manipulating the former. Desmond doesn’t give himself time to think about the pain, simply gripping the fabric of his robe in between his teeth before willing the door to be repaired.

His scream is muted, agony burning through his entire arm all the way past his shoulder towards his neck. Hot pain - searing, like molten metal coating his arm. He’s biting down, _hard_ , he must surely have cracked his teeth with how much force he’s using but it doesn’t help. He wants to stop, a measly fucking door is never worth the suffering being inflicted on his body. The thought rages in his mind but the process doesn’t cease, the glow is red now and mocking, reforming the door without pause. Desmond’s world is white hot and hellish, the moment he activated the eye taken and reborn and stretched out to fit this singular unending segment of torture.

And then it stops. Desmond does the same. He collapses at the door, body wracked with waves of shivers and he’s cold, so very damn cold. There’s ringing in his ears, lighting cracks of pain in his right side and fuck, he’s so tired, so very fucking tired. He’s dizzy, what little he can see of the room is constantly refusing to remain horizontal and his lungs can’t seem to get a hold of the air he needs. He's going to be found and tortured and killed all because he couldn't just stop and think and instead he relied too much on this bullshit to-

There are walls in his mind. They appear suddenly, cutting him off from himself and removing his panicking consciousness from the equation. He isn't in control anymore, flung out and across from his slumped form. He's watches himself slowly stand across from this strange astral perspective - face expressionless as he, no, _his body_ begins to examine itself. It removes the robe, tying it around his chest - a quick tear at the sleeve of his left arm and the material comes loose, a hasty tourniquet assembled and wrapped around his arm. He can't see where the wound is, only that it is clearly about to start bleeding onto the floor once it fully soaks the right half of his clothes. Field dressing in place, his now bare left arm works the door to the outside world before his body slams it shut and leaves the Pazzi study altogether.

It's a hazy affair once his body flees the scene. He catches glimpses, little snippets of himself compensating for the injuries as he ventures somewhere, a destination Desmond isn't privy to save for the brief flashes of clarity. A turn, a jump, a fall. He doesn't know the order of it all, can't tell if the place he'll bleed out is a rooftop or a ditch and his arm, Jesus his _arm._

God there’s so much blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kept you waiting, huh?


	4. Chapter 4

Everything hurts.

The rafters of his room come into focus at that thought and yeah, he’s not a human being anymore, he’s a fucking person sized bruise. Early morning sunlight crests his face - harsh enough to cause a stab of pain in his forehead and nearly ruin the view of the sky that’s barely interrupted by the city rooftops.

Wait.

He sits up in spite of the protest from his ribs and the pulse in his eyes because this isn’t his room from the Inn, far from it. It's much too beautiful for one, opulence in place of humble simplicity with the various expensive rugs, richly decorated curtains and the grandeur of the bed he’s lying on. And there are his clothes, hung and folded at the end of the room, hidden blades and their bracers even placed neatly on a table next to them.

They’ve been cleaned and cared for and so has he, he realises. The muck of dried sweat that he expects is absent and his eyes fall on his arm - skin obscured behind a layer of protective cloth wrapped tightly against his forearm. There’s no blood or hint of crimson to be seen, no pain or ache that would suggest a lingering wound. He probably doesn’t even have a scar underneath his dressing if past experience is anything to go by.

Apart from the memory, you’d never know that his arm had been injured at all. He’s not with the Pazzi then, he’d have woken up in chains if he was and definitely not in such luxury. So where. . . ah. A hint of amber and expanded awareness explains the decorative choice at least, it's to be expected from a place like La Rosa Colta.

He must be on the third floor then, in the secluded loft reserved for Paola and her other life. Shit, is he in her bed? Why of all places did his body come back here? Desmond frowns and his sixth sense goes hunting for the person in question, finding her in a private room on the ground floor. She’s not alone, the person standing across from her glows so brightly in his mind that Desmond nearly misses the stack of codex papers both are discussing rather animatedly.

If the Codex pages had been a spotlight the night before, Federico Auditore is a star upon the Earth - blinding and screaming sacred importance to his brain. It’s overwhelming enough to make Desmond fall back upon the bed in pain and curse his super healing that apparently isn’t super enough to deal with with agony of the emotional variety.

His mind hasn’t walled itself off like his fight in the mountains and so he’s getting the full spectrum of Ezio’s feelings from all points of his life. The love of a brotherly bond that grew wild and strong like Tuscan oak, the raw wound upon his soul when it was cut down. The haunting presence soaked into every corner of Florence in the years that followed, the fond memories of a sibling whose face to an old man was a cherished haze of forgotten details.

There’s tears on his face as the feedback comes through, just a few that wet his cheeks and accompany that shuddering sense of loss that wracks his being and leaves him pondering whether it's better to bolt and leave before the inevitable knock at the door arrives.

He won’t, obviously, there’s too much at stake for Desmond to vanish now and waste whatever this second chance ends up being. He blinks away the tears, somewhat happy that he hasn’t been totally reduced to an emotionless robot outside of battle and steels himself.

The physical pain seems to be receding at least, enough for him to shimmy out from under the covers towards the waiting set of clothes and the replacement doublet hanging under his robe. Nothing seems to be missing nor tampered with, save for the Codex pages, his sword and some knives and he had been meaning to get codex pages to the Auditore's eventually anyway, perhaps that will invite some measure of open mindedness when he inevitably gets questioned.

A single bracer to go with his pants and boots are what he manages to get on before the knock arrives, loud and followed with the creak of an opening door and the footsteps of two Assassins laden with questions.

 

* * *

 

Federico isn't sure what he expects to find waiting on the other side of the opening door, hell he doesn’t know what to make of the morning so far with what Paola had told him of the events the night before, but a man walking upright after having been described as being on death’s door is not high on his list.

Paola is just as shocked. She hesitates for the briefest of moments, a sign of surprise that's as glaring as a scream for a woman to whom sophisticated composure is as vital to her continued existence as the air she breathes. It’s a testament to how much the role she plays has become instinctual that she continues through the door with nary a break in pace and a gentle ushering of him to follow before closing it.

It’s just past dawn, too early for the sounds of the city to rise to their usual chorus and Federico almost wishes that they already had, that the gleaming sun cresting the strangers form had some form of sound to contrast the image the man presents. Paola had deigned to describe him in as much detail as she deemed necessary, telling him that she wanted a second opinion and that he’d have to see her guest for himself.

Perhaps it’s a good thing she did, it’s not easy to describe a man who looks like he’s been sculpted by the hands of Myron himself, an example of physical prowess impressive enough that life took root within it and delivered him to Paola.

Maybe it’s his night’s work bleeding into the morning with barely an hour of sleep in between the two that causes him to describe the stranger so, or maybe it’s his mother's recent insistence on educating him in the arts to contrast his more earthly pursuits, he cannot say anything other than that it suits him.

He’s tall, a fair bit more so than himself if he were to hazard a guess, but somehow that’s the least striking thing about him. His skin is ever so pale, like Petruccio’s when his brother is particularly sick and kept inside the safety of the Palazzo for weeks at a time - the strangers face and arms seemingly the only areas to have felt the grace of the sun - and yet the man in front of him is the farthest thing from sickly.

Indeed the more Federico looks, the more the man appears to have actually been carved from stone, well muscled wherever there is no clothing to obstruct Federico’s view - his body clearly honed to be lithe and flexible instead of trained for brute strength, though doubtless, the man isn’t lacking in it.

And then there is the silver that marks the length of him. It flows in strands across his limbs and chest in a way that is too elegant to be a brand denoting punishment, too beautiful and carefully measured to be anything other than something this stranger wished to be adorned with. But Federico barely looks at them, ignores the wisp of something bright at the edge of his eyes as they travel upwards and away from the art imprinted on the bodily canvas. How can he concentrate on anything further when the light catches at the right angle to reveal his brothers face staring back at him.

It is an imperfect recreation, subtle differences in the fullness of his jaw and the presence of a scar through his lips but it is enough to make him stare without a thought for impropriety. Clean lines dominate his face, the hinting stubble of his beard enjoys the same shade of brown as the closely cropped hair on his head.

He’s young, age a far and distant concept and not an inevitability that’s come to make its home on his features just yet. He must be younger than Federico, barely older than Ezio and by God does he look like the latter.

If wealth were measured in questions, Federico could own all of Tuscany.

“Good morning.” Paola says finally with a nod to her guest. “I admit, I did not expect to find you awake, let alone getting dressed after I saw you last.”

The man finishes securing the strap of his bracer before he turns, bare chested and seemingly uncaring as to his state of undress. The angle affords Federico a better look at him, specifically the full view of his face and the resemblance truly is frightening. If he didn’t know how deeply his Father loved his Mother, if their affections were a public facade like so many of the other noble households, Federico would have left Paola where she stood and ran to his Father at the first sight of this man and demanded to know _why_.

“Pain and I are old friends.” The man says as Federico realises he’s been staring. “Pays to be when I wake up in strange places, when I need to be cautious.”

“How much caution does a strange place that leaves you your weapons and bandages your wounds warrant?” Paola asks, hands hidden in the sleeves of her dress where Federico knows she keeps at least one stiletto handy.

“Strange, not dangerous. Though I suppose they tend to go hand in hand with our type of work.” The man replies, gesturing between himself and Paola. “I knew it would be safe here.”

“Our type of work you say?” Paola asks disbelievingly, the man replying with a single nod. “Then you are either the most trusting, battle ready whore I have ever laid eyes upon or your arm is not the only thing that needs to be examined.”

The stranger blinks, raising his arm thats protected by his bracer and with a flick of his wrist emerges a blade. At this revelation Federico does gasp, eyes going wide at the sight of it, of how similar it is to the one used by his father when he vanishes into the night adorned in white and hidden behind the shadows of a beaked hood. Oh no, he need not limit himself to merely Tuscany, now his wealth of questions could buy all of Italia.

“You’re really an Assassin?” Federico blurts out with barely restrained eagerness and relishes the confirming nod he receives, even if a glare from Paola accompanies it. “Truly?”

“Yes, that’s why I knew it would be safe here last night,” The Assassin looks to Paola then. “Pays to know where one can find shelter.”

Paola looks like she might flay Federico alive when she turns back to face her unexpected guest. “You seem to know a lot about us and yet we know nothing of you, Ser...?” She asks fetchingly.

“Desmond.” The man says after a moment. “Desmond Miles. I’m an Assassin, just like you.”

Assassin. _Like you_. The man, Desmond, says these words easily, as though he were among trusted friends and not complete strangers, like it is simply a thing to be accepted as easily as the rising of the sun. The name is definitely foreign, perhaps his ancestors hail from the lands of France and Britannia given the historical intertwining of the two. And somehow the accent that flutters around his words is perfectly Florentine, sophisticated even, more noble than if he had learnt it from time spent among the common man.

Yet it is his claim to the title that makes Federico realise he doesn’t know much of anything about the Brotherhood beyond Florence’s walls, how they operate or whether they’re even on good terms with the Assassins who call the city home. Perhaps the notion of Brotherhood only extends as far as the roads that end at his Uncle’s estate before they wither into nothingness.

Oh, isn't that a thought? Desmond could be dangerous as well as a mystery. His father never told him anything of an Assassin visiting the city or why he’s been having Federico patrol and ask for information so incessantly the past few days. Could this be the reason? Could this man who looks the part of a gladiator rather than an elusive shadow be responsible for his Father’s abundance of tasks lately?

“Why are you here?” Federico asks, a lot more aware now of how difficult it would be to fight Desmond if he possesses even a hint of the skill the title he claims to hold requires. “Why did you not inform my Father of your presence in the city?”

Desmond almost looks pained at the tone of the question. “I’m looking for something and I didn’t know whether I would be staying long enough for it to be worth telling your Father.” He replies. “If I hadn’t been wounded then I might have left already.” He points to Paola. “I’m sure you can understand why, you were probably reading it before you came up here.”

“Perhaps,” Paola says carefully. “But those pages can always be forgeries, we haven’t had anyone with the skill needed look them over to determine whether they are or not.”

Desmond huffs. “Fair point, but if this is some elaborate trap being arranged on my part then you have to admit it's pretty terrible as far as not being suspicious goes.” He smiles at that and it suits him as readily as the lines across his chest. “But,” Desmond continues. “If it helps I’ll try and answer any questions you have, put your minds at ease if I can.”

“How were you wounded?” Paola asks immediately with a step forward. “What brought you so low that you came here?”

“I overestimated myself.” Desmond responds with a sigh and look to his arm. “As well as underestimating how much certain citizens of the city like to invest in keeping their stolen secrets.”

“You were attacked?” Federico asks. He too steps forward, as though shortening the distance between the two men would hasten Desmond’s explanation.

“Attacked is one way to put it,” Desmond huffs again as he looks at the Auditore. “More me making the mistake of assuming Florence is like all other cities, that it holds the same type of dangers.”

He finds it hard to reconcile the image of a man like Desmond with someone who makes mistakes, the single scar upon his lips a lesson in caution and so public a reminder that he had taken pains to make sure that it would be the only one he would need in life. The unblemished skin he displays surely lend weight to that assumption but then again, that lesson can’t have been very long ago with how young he looks.

“You claim to be an Assassin, Ser Desmond, may I inquire where from?” Federico asks and oh does he wish that this would be the answer that does not spawn a thousand more questions.

The pained face Desmond makes suggest that no, it would not. “I don’t really belong to any part of the Brotherhood, I’m too much of a traveler for that. If you want to know where I was trained then the answer is the old castle of Masyaf in the Levant.”

“Masyaf?” Paola responds, surprised. “I had thought the castle destroyed when the Mongols besieged it all those years ago?”

Desmond shakes his head. “Only mostly destroyed, it was for the most part abandoned before the siege but that doesn’t mean the Assassins pay it no mind, as I found out.”

“And just like that, they decided to train you?” Paola scoffs. “Forgive me but I find that difficult to believe.”

“You speak as if I was asked beforehand.” There’s anger in Desmond’s tone but it is cooled, not a fresh wound, a simmer to its heat rather than a fire. “I learned things there, secrets and revelations regarding our order and the life of Altaïr. I had to act on what I learned and when it became clear I couldn’t change things by remaining there, I decided to leave.”

“So you are an imposter then,” Paola states angrily. “And you came here for aid you were not entitled to.” Federico tenses in case this is the moment where tempers reveal themselves to be stronger than presumed civility.

“Please,” Desmond scoffs. “If there was nothing genuine in me when I came to you then you wouldn’t have given me back my blades and I’d be getting interrogated by Giovanni Auditore right now instead of you and his son.” He even rolls his eyes at the accusation.

“Your appearance and your words could be forged just as easily as the pages you had on you,” Paola counters. “There would be no way of knowing if you were truly on our side before you had the chance to harm us.”

At that, Desmond does look angry. “If I wanted to harm you I would have killed Mario Auditore before I came here, struck down his brother’s family when I arrived and then moved on to you and La Volpe before paying a visit to the Assassins in Venice. I’m not asking you to accept me but I am asking you to hear what I have to say before you condemn me.”

The room is quiet save for the birds and the stirring city and yet Federico hears nothing. The thought of his Uncle, of himself and his family dead at Desmond’s hands bring up an intense feeling of wrongness within him, nevermind the ease to which the man has simply listed the members of his Father’s allies within the city and beyond. He makes a point though, mired in horror though it may be. If Desmond did truly mean them harm then he is outclassed in planning by even Ezio on a bad day.

Paola must know it too, though her face is stern and judging, none of the fear he feels seeping through the mask of her face. It must be an age before it softens and he lets himself breathe at the waning tension.

“You ask a lot,” Paola says begrudgingly. “Far more than I am comfortable with giving but there is reason in your words. If you are one of us and if you truly mean us no harm then you will hand me your weapons and wait until I can bring Giovanni here to speak with you.”

Desmond starts on the bracer straps before she’s even finished speaking and offers it to her, blade and all before gesturing to it's twin on the table. Paola takes both in hand while looking surprised that there aren’t more hidden weapons. Perhaps the confiscated sword and knives he saw in the room downstairs really were all Desmond carried with him.

“Thank you.” Paola sighs. The tension in her stance seems to relax a little as she speaks. She turns to Federico and oh, he knows that look. “I need to see to informing your father, I trust you can look after Ser Desmond until I return?”

“Of course, Madonna.” Federico responds. She nods in kind, glancing once more at Desmond before turning her attentions towards making her way out the room.

And then it is just the two of them, a supposed Assassin and a novice in training standing apart from one another. He isn’t sure what to do now, whether Desmond is a prisoner or a guest at this point and if this is another test he’ll have to endure before he can meet his Father as an equal.

“I can hear your thoughts.” Desmond says, breaking the tension. “I’m not going to cause any trouble for you.”

“I believe you,” Federico confesses, electing to continue standing as Desmond abandons his task of getting dressed and moves to sit on the edge of the bed. “Though I don’t know why I do.”

Desmond makes a face at that. “Can you not see me?” He asks.

“See you?” Federico frowns. It is indeed very hard to not see the man when he presents a picture as he does currently, though perhaps it is a saying from the Levant? “I am not blind, Ser Desmond.”

“No, see me, with your sense.” Desmond insists as his eyes become clouded with amber. “Do you not have it?”

Oh. _Oh_.

It isn’t fair, how similar this man and his brother are in even this, the most secret of things. Of course Federico knows of what he speaks, of course he recognises the sheen of amber that colours Desmond’s eyes after having wished to be blessed with it since Ezio confided in him about it. And now this man has it as well, wearing Ezio's face and acting as further proof that Federico isn't the selfless older brother he wishes to be.

“I-I do not.” Federico confesses. He hopes the tinge of resentment he feels isn’t obvious in his words, he has tried so hard since discovering his Brother’s gift to restrict its growth in his heart. “I can’t see as you do.”

“Yes you can.” Desmond says immediately, abandoning his short lived place on the bed to cover the distance between them. Federico feels as though he is a child once more under his Father’s all knowing gaze, insecurities stripped bare to the world. “Of course you can.”

“I do not lie, Ser Desmond, the only person I know who can see as you do is my Brother.” Federico insists.

“Then you should be able to as well.” Desmond replies, his head tilting as he looks at Federico. “Spar with me.” He says suddenly, stepping back, gesturing to the open area not crowded with furniture.

“Spar with you?” Federico asks, confused because what in the hell? Sparring? “Why do you want me to spar with you?"

“It’s gonna be a while till your Father gets here, isn’t it?” He smiles at Federico’s confused nod. “Then spar with me to pass the time and I’ll teach you how to get the sight.”

“Do you think I have not tried?” Federico asks tersely. “I have asked my Brother how he calls upon it and it has never worked for me, it is not something that can be learned.”

“I did.” Desmond says as easily as all his other revelations. “Beat me in sparring and I’ll show you.”

Something kindles in his heart, something that was smothered after countless nights of trying with nothing to show for it. Desmond wouldn’t lie, he has barely met the man but this is something sacred, not something he would jest about. Perhaps what he needed was a teacher to guide him during those times instead of an easily distracted brother. Perhaps. . .

“Alright.” Federico half whispers, widening his stance and curling his hands into fists.

Desmond smiles. “Are you really going to spar in that?” He asks, gesturing to Federico’s upper half.

“Oh,” He says, looking down at this clothes. “I suppose not.”

Federico isn’t self conscious about his looks, heavens knows he likes to flaunt his looks as much as brother does, more so in the case of his attire but he feels as though he doesn’t quite measure up to the physique of Desmond when he’s stripped of his jerkin and doublet and all he has is skin.

He hasn’t sparred without weapons since La Volpe taught him how to defend himself should he be caught without his sword, nevermind the last time he had the company of a man with so few clothes as he does now. He hopes the blush he feels isn’t so noticeable in the steadily increasing amount of sunlight but he brings up in his fists defensively to hide his cheeks just in case.

Paola’s room is expansive but with all the furniture and decorations, there isn’t exactly a lot of room to maneuver. Desmond seems to realise this, content to almost lazily hold his ground and goad Federico into trying to attack him head on since the opportunity to do so from any other angle is practically nothing.

So he does. It's not a serious jab, just something with which to probe and get a feel for how Desmond likes to defend. That sentiment seems to be lost on the man in question as he side steps and pulls Federico’s fist forward. Federico curses and feels the loss of balance at the same time as Desmond steps in to steady him, a gentle flick to the ear getting his point across.

“Your opponent isn’t going to give you the luxury of finding out his weaknesses.” Desmond chides before stepping back into his original place and bringing his fists up.

Federico huffs, stepping back as well. Desmond is quick, inhumanly so, and he puts that speed to good use as they repeat the routine, albeit with more intent behind it. Again, Desmond steps out of the way of his fist and again, Federico gets a flick to the ear instead of the knife to his throat that a real fight would result in.

And so they battle as the morning sun rises and the shadows peel away. Federico eventually abandons caution as the time presses on, launching himself at Desmond with quick jabs and kicks learned from many a street fight. They all meet nothing but open air, in fact the only time he manages to make contact with the Assassin is when his assault is inevitably countered and the mock final blow is landed upon him.

He doesn’t know how he can best the man when he is breathing hard and Desmond isn’t even sweating. Just how much exactly do the Levantine Brotherhood train their novices if a man as young as Desmond looks can be so much greater in skill than he?

“Enough.” Desmond states after enough time for the sun to fully emerge, hand coming up to stop Federico’s protest before it leaves his lips. “I don’t need you to beat me, I just wanted to see how you fought.”

Federico breathes hard as Desmond crowds into his space and is half thankful for the strain of exercise and the way it keeps his breath from hitching. He can see the amber in Desmond’s eyes and hopes that whatever he sees isn’t something that will mark him as unteachable. Hope kindles in his heart as Desmond gently takes his chin in hand and turns his head either side, nodding each time.

“Do you trust me?” Desmond asks.

“I do.” Federico confesses.

“Then I need you to close your eyes and not open them till I say so.” Federico does as requested and feels the touch of Desmond’s fingers either side of his temple. The Assassins touch is gentle, leisurely and not at all fleeting like it had been during the spar.

“The first thing you need to realise is that it isn’t a sight at all, it's a sense, like your hearing.” Desmond states.

“It’s not?” Federico asks with confusion. “But your eyes, they change when you use it?”

“If you can see that then you definitely have it.” Desmond says. “Tell me, when you close your eyes, do you lose all track of where things are in this room? Do you suddenly not know what’s inside of it?”

Federico gently shakes his head “No, of course not.”

“The sense is like that, only it lets you feel your surroundings, you become aware of exactly where things are, of how they are.” Desmond’s words are soft and mirrored in the way he presses his fingers either side of Federico’s head. “It’s how I knew Paola wasn’t going to stab me with that knife in her sleeve.”

“But how do I use it? My eyes are closed but the world is still nothing but darkness.” Federico whispers.

“It helps to concentrate on a single thing or person, to concentrate on them and feel their intentions.” Desmond’s fingers feel warmer as he speaks. “I’m right in front of you Federico, tell me what you feel.”

So Federico concentrates. He tries to conjure the image of Desmond’s face, of the silver patterns in his skin and how they connect, of what he could be thinking as he speaks as though he knows Federico can do this. The tiny wisps from before break free at the edge of his blackened vision, hinting of something Federico could see if only he believed.

He feels. . .

It is . . .

Gold. So much gold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear I didn't mean to keep you all on that cliffhanger for so long.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed though I apologise for any proofreading errors that may have slipped through.


End file.
